Area school districts ease into healthy foods with little pushback

Jill Pennington, a food service worker at Mentor High School, serves salad, baked beans, blended vegetables and a beef patty on a whole wheat bun to students at Mentor High School. Schools are continuing their efforts to serve healthy lunches to kids.

School lunches have seen many changes throughout the past few years to incorporate healthy options for students.
Federal requirements, like the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, have mandated that foods improve in quality to ensure students are getting the nutrition they need.
For some districts, the change has been difficult, with students unhappy with changes or unwilling to eat the new food.
In Mentor Schools, the transition has gone over well, due in part to the district planning ahead, said School Nutrition Supervisor Jeni Lange.
“We started moving ahead prior to even the new regulations going into effect,” she said. “We kind of baby-stepped our way into it by introducing a lot of these new food items a couple years ago — just so students would have a better chance to get used to them, accept them and see them.”
The kitchen staff helps to encourage participation in the lunch program by offering up creative solutions to provide variety in the required foods.
“Legumes — it’s a lot of the beans, black beans, red beans, those kind of things and we’ve gotten really creative in making salsas, incorporating them in other vegetable dishes that we prepare, incorporating them into our entrees, even getting them into taco meat, things like that,” Lange said.
Making the switch to whole grain in pasta and bread products was done in stages in order to allow kids time to adapt. The school started by replacing portions of the day’s meals with whole grain, and gradually increasing until it was all whole grain.
“I honestly like (the changes), I like eating healthy,” said 17-year-old senior Alex Morgan.
She and her classmates are happy to have the added variety in their lunches. Alex typically buys lunch at the school every other day.
“I like how they incorporate when you buy the lunch, you get the entree, a drink and an extra side, that side usually is a banana, or a cup of fruit, whatever, and the cashiers will actually ask you, ‘Hey, do you want an extra side?’ ... so that (the kids) will get it,” said Tyler Cox, an 18-year-old senior.
Riverside and Painesville school districts make sure their students are taking their sides, too, but it doesn’t mean the students are always eating them.
Some of the high school students in both districts have said they simply can’t eat all of the food that the school is required to provide, said Kelly Minnick, director of nutrition services for both districts.
That leads to more waste than the schools had prior to the new requirements, she added.
One way the schools attempt to combat the extra waste is when students take a side they do not wish to eat, as long as it is pre-packaged, they can drop it off at a designated table for other students to pick up if they’d like.
“We try to give them a lot of different options so that they are able to choose something they like,” she said.
Overall, the Riverside and Painesville districts also were working to improve the quality of food provided before the requirements were put in place. The next focus will be to lower the sodium, although Minnick says it won’t be a fast change.
“That’s just not how our food nationwide is prepared,” she said of lower sodium. “(Manufacturers will) slowly be lowering the sodium in different products that they’ve been producing.”
Locally, officials are expecting the sodium reduction to be the biggest challenge.
“I feel comfortable with where we are,” Lange said. “A greater challenge will be sodium reduction. Most people, not that they pour salt onto their food, but they are just used to having that enhanced flavor,” she said. “(Manufacturers) have started reformulating their popular items and taking out the salt. It does have a little bit of a different taste profile, but if you start introducing it early and subtly, students don’t tend to notice it as much.”
In Lorain County, a preference for healthy foods was not present within Lorain High School’s cafeteria recently as students were witnessed passing up leafy greens and cups of fruit as they exited the lines with their lunches.
They opted for other foods, including nachos, tacos, slices of pizza and french fries smothered in cheese.
And although those menu items appeared to be a popular choice, some students voiced their disapproval of the changes made to their school meals.
“Michelle Obama needs to switch back our food, that’s what she needs to do,” said 17-year-old senior Damien Johnson. “They need to offer us a new menu.”
He equated the bland food to prison fare, and said the breads and French fries were frequently hard — nothing like what appears in the posters on the walls of the cafeteria.
“This is what a school lunch should look like,” Damien said as he pointed to a poster. “It’s sad.”
Senior Melvin Rodriquez, 17, said he agreed, and that he, too, isn’t a fan of the food served — but it’s the only option available.
“It’s all we have to eat,” he said. “If I don’t eat it, I go hungry all day.”
To help students understand the change in the school’s breakfast and lunch programs, signs are posted on each service line to show students how to select a meal that is federally reimbursable to the school.
“We help them recognize how their menu choices fit into the key food groups needed to ensure a balanced diet,” said Kelly Banaszak, Aramark senior communications manager. Aramark Corp. Food Services currently supplies all schools within Lorain’s district with these balanced meals.
Along with hot items, name-brand snacks — including pretzels, granola and cereal bars, cookies and graham crackers — have been reformulated to feature more whole grains, less fat, salt and sugar and more fiber, Banaszak said.
Variety is the key to success when introducing changes, Lange said.
“I’ve read so much about schools talking about, ‘Boy we’ve lost so much participation, kids are going hungry,’ You have to make sure you offer options, something that will appeal,” she said.